


this life is our shared dream

by somethingrichandstrange



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dream Sharing, Ficlet, R Plus L Equals J, Targaryen shenanigans, Targaryen-induced panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27301423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingrichandstrange/pseuds/somethingrichandstrange
Summary: After Lord Eddard Stark is informed by a maid of Jon's curious collection of drawings, he investigates and promptly has an internal panic attack before feeding all of his kid's artwork into the nearest fire.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Aegon VI Targaryen/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	this life is our shared dream

He feeds the pictures one by one into the fire, staring stonily down onto the childish drawings as they incinerate. 

The first one he’d dropped into the hearth had been a sketch of a girl in Essos, small and skinny as she trips bare footed through the streets of some faraway city. The queer scene, far too intricate and detailed despite its messiness, is not the most eye-catching part of the picture. 

No, its most arresting quality are the girl’s eyes, stained purple with the blackberry juice Jon had dribbled over them. He’d likely filched them from his own fast plate, secreting them away to summon ghosts on parchment. 

Ned may be frightened, but he is no fool. He knows who the Berry Girl is, and so he burns her first. 

The other pieces—most sketched, some inked, a few charcoaled—contain either the Berry Girl or the Cabin Boy. The Cabin Boy, or at least that’s what Ned assumes he is as the mystery child is always depicted upon a ship, climbing the rigging or leaning off the starboard side with his face to the wind, has two-toned hair—and wasn’t that strange? It was colored in at the ends but left without pigment at the roots. 

There was even one scene that contained Jon himself. It’d been scribbled frantically on the smallest scrap of parchment in the pile. Ned had clutched so tightly at its edges he’d torn it, his mind already trying to ward away the image of his son sitting comfortably between the Berry Girl and the Cabin Boy. 

The odd trio had penciled grins, their impossibly proportioned hands linked as they gazed out at the man looking back at them. They are also wearing crowns, this childish triumvirate. 

Ned spends hours there in front of the hearth, staring and burning, his mind miles away and seven years in the past. 

‘Jon will be distressed,’ Ned’s mind supplies. Clearly the boy had spent long hours, candle at his bedside, drawing death warrants. 

No matter. Ned will simply tell his son not to dwell on dreams. 

He'll implore Jon to read of the winter kings of old, to apply himself more in training, to memorize maps and learn their folk songs. If Jon stares at the old tomes in the musty dark, if he fights until exhausted in the biting cold, if he can picture the entire topography of their land in his head, if he sees the value in Northern culture and Winterfell, in his sisters and brothers and father, then he will dream of ice and not—

Ned has promises to keep. To his sister and their son.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this ficlet is a quote by Toba Beta in "My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut."


End file.
